Low Functional Load Research Articles

The predictive function of Swedish word accents.

Swedish lexical word accents have been repeatedly said to have a low functional load. Even so, the language has kept these tones ever since they emerged probably over a thousand years ago. This article proposes that the primary function of word accents is for listeners to be able to predict upcoming morphological structures and narrow down the lexical competition rather than being lexically distinctive. Psycho- and neurophysiological evidence for the predictive function of word accents is discussed. A novel analysis displays that word accents have a facilitative role in word processing. Specifically, a correlation is revealed between how much incorrect word accents hinder listeners’ processing and how much they reduce response times when correct. Finally, a dual-route model of the predictive use of word accents with distinct neural substrates is put forth.

Features of low functional load in mono- and bilinguals' lexical access: evidence from Swedish tonal accent.

Swedish makes use of tonal accents (Accents 1 and 2) to contrast words, but the functional load is very low, with some regional dialects not even exhibiting the contrast. In particular given the low number of minimal pairs, the question is whether tonal word accent is used in lexical access. Here we present two cross-modal fragment semantic priming studies in order to address this question. Both experiments use first syllable fragments in order to prime semantically related targets. Experiment 1 utilises words whose first syllable occurs with both accent patterns, creating a situation in which there is lexical competition between words that differ solely in terms of accent. Experiment 2 removes this competition by using words that have no such accent competitors. Our results show that native speakers of Swedish use tonal word accent in lexical access: Accent mispronunciations failed to prime semantically related targets, regardless of whether primes had accent competitors or not. Results for a group of early bilingual speakers (who grew up with one Swedish-speaking parent and one other non-tonal language) showed no differences in processing compared to the monolinguals. This indicates that the extraction of accent features during acquisition and their use in lexical access is robust, even in a scenario where multiple input languages lead to tonal word accent being a useful feature for only some of the lexical items that are being acquired. There is no doubt that the accent system is well entrenched into the bilinguals' phonological system.

The Effects of ESL Immersion and Proficiency on Learners’ Pronunciation Development

Despite the efforts of existing studies in the domain of L2 phonology to examine ESL learners’ pronunciation development, little research has comprehensively demonstrated ESL learners’ pronunciation improvement in academic immersion contexts. Similarly, few studies have focused on learners’ proficiency levels linked to their developmental success. The current exploratory study investigated the changes of learners’ pronunciation constructs as a result of their ESL program. Seventy-five newly arrived ESL students (25 in each proficiency; beginner, intermediate, and advanced) enrolled in an Intensive English Program in the United States provided their speech responses (to the placement and exit tests from the program). One hundred fifty speaking samples were linguistically analyzed for the following suprasegmental features: fluency (speech rates and pauses) and prosody (prominence and pitch range). Segmental features were analyzed by employing a functional load approach with randomly selected 90 speech files. Findings revealed different developmental patterns among phonological features and proficiency levels; that is, the upper-level learners improved more in fluency and prominence than the lower-level learners. Segmental changes were minimal, suggesting that both high functional and low functional load sounds involve a complex process in learning. Overall findings provide important implications for ESL curriculum planning and development: 1) intonation acquisition can be difficult; 2) skill improvement differs by proficiency level; and 3) level-specific curriculum may be needed.

Tackling Perception Bias in Unsupervised Phoneme Discovery Using DPGMM-RNN Hybrid Model and Functional Load

The human perception of phonemes is biased against speech sounds. The lack of correspondence between perceputal phonemes and acoustic signals forms a big challenge in designing unsupervised algorithms to distinguish phonemes from sound. We propose the DPGMM-RNN hybrid model that improves phoneme categorization by relieving the fragmentation problem. We also merge segments with low functional load, which is the work done by segment contrasts to differentiate between utterances, just like humans who convert unambiguous segments into phonemes as units for immediate perception. Our results show that the DPGMM-RNN hybrid model relieves the fragmentation problem and improves phoneme discriminability. The minimal functional load merge compresses a segment system, preserves information and keeps phoneme discriminability.

A computational modelof phonotactic acquisition

AbstractThis paper presents a model that connects phonotactic exceptionality to perceptibility, more specifically to functional load and acoustic detail. I identify two patterns in exceptionality: lexical exceptions and phonotactic vacillation, where the former is restricted to specific lexical items, while the latter affects two contrastive sound categories as a whole. Through the example of Hungarian word-final phonotactics, the Model of Perceptual Categorization associates these two patterns with different functional load and acoustic properties of contrasts, that lead to two categorizational malfunctions. On the one hand, phonotactic vacillation is a result of a frequent failure to categorize ambiguous tokens: low functional load coinciding with little acoustic difference. On the other hand, lexical exceptions are systematic categorizational mistakes brought about by salient categories – in this case distributional generalizations are hindered by interference from mislabeled tokens.

Education and Input as Predictors of Second Language Attainment in Naturalistic Contexts

This study examines the effects of education and input as predictors of adult second language acquisition in naturalistic contexts. L1 Albanian learners of Greek who differed in amount of schooling (from 4 to 16 years) and length of residence (from 8 to 27 years) completed elicitation tasks that tested mastery of gender and number agreement, and past tense morphology. In addition, samples of spontaneous speech were assessed for fluency, grammatical complexity, and lexical richness in order to establish the learners’ overall proficiency in the L2. We hypothesized that education would facilitate attention to form and hence lead to better attainment of grammatical distinctions with relatively low functional load, particularly when these are complex. Quantity of input would be most strongly associated with aspects of language that are most relevant to communication, and in particular, fluency. These predictions were largely confirmed: education accounted for 15% of the variance on adjective number agreement and between 31% and 38% of the variance in performance on past tense morphology, which is considerably more complex. Fluency and clausal density, in contrast, were associated with length of residence but not with education.

Language dominance does not always predict cross-linguistic interactions in bilingual speech production

Abstract The present study describes the results of two experiments that analyze the effects of language dominance on Catalan/Spanish bilingual speech production. We examined the acoustics of the Catalan [a]~[ə] alternation (a phonological process induced by lexical stress) and of the Catalan mid vowel contrasts /e/-/ɛ/ and /o/-/ɔ/ (two phonemic contrasts) in the speech of Catalan- vs. Spanish-dominant early Catalan/Spanish bilinguals from Majorca (Spain). The results indicate that, contrary to the analysis of the Catalan mid vowels, stressed and unstressed Spanish and Catalan /a/ yielded no significant difference as a function of language dominance. These findings suggest that unstressed vowel reduction, a phonological process, may be relatively easier to acquire than phonemic contrasts with a low functional load (/e/-/ɛ/, /o/-/ɔ/), perhaps because its predictability and high frequency may attract attention and/or relieve cognitive resources, which could be conducive to phonological learning. These findings demonstrate that language dominance effects in the production of phonemic contrasts, widely researched in the literature on early bilingualism, do not guarantee the same effects on the implementation of phonological processes.

Mergers in Bardi: contextual probability and predictors of sound change

Abstract A crucial question for historical linguistics has been why some sound changes happen but not others. Recent work on the foundations of sound change has argued that subtle distributional facts about segments in a language, such as functional load, play a role in facilitating or impeding change. Thus not only are sound changes not all equally plausible, but their likelihood depends in part on phonotactics and aspects of functional load, such as the density of minimal pairs. Tests of predictability on the chance of phoneme merger suggest that phonemes with low functional load (as defined by minimal pair density) are more likely to merge, but this has been investigated only for a small number of languages with very large corpora and well attested mergers. Here we present work suggesting that the same methods can be applied to much smaller corpora, by presenting the results of a preliminary exploration of nine Australian languages, with a particular focus on Bardi, a Nyulnyulan language from Australia’s northwest. Our results support the hypothesis that the probability of merger is higher when phonemes distinguish few minimal pairs.

On the Merger of Korean Mid Front Vowels: Phonetic and Phonological Evidence

This paper investigates the status of the merger between the mid front unrounded vowels ㅔ[e] and ㅐ[<TEX>${\varepsilon}$</TEX>] in contemporary Korean. Our analysis is based on a balanced corpus of production and perception data from young subjects from three dialectal areas (Seoul, Daegu and Gwangju). Except for expected gender differences, the production data display no difference in the realization of these vowels, in any of the dialects. The perception data, while mostly in line with the production results, show that Seoul females tend to better discriminate the two vowels in terms of perceived height: vowels with a lower F1 are more likely to be categorized as ㅔ by this group. We then investigate the possible causes of this merger: based on an empirical study of transcribed spoken Korean, we show that the pair of vowels ㅔ/ㅐ has a very low functional load. We argue that this factor, together with the phonetic similarity of the two vowels, may have been responsible for the observed merger.

Transitivity in Cholim Tangsa

Transitivity in the Cholim variety of Tangsa is seen to be a grammatical feature with low functional load. It is viewed in terms of three factors: the form of the verb (simplex, middle and causative), the relationship to markers of agentivity and anti-agentive, and the verbal agreement system of Cholim. Using traditional texts, the paper explores in detail the issues raised by an examination of transitivity, and relates the findings to the treatment of transitivity in other Tibeto-Burman languages and beyond.

Negative commands in Spanish-speaking children: no need for recourse to relativized minimality (a reply to Grinstead, 2000).

In a recent commentary, Grinstead (2000) argues against Bates &amp; Goodman's (1999) claims that the development of grammar is contingent on developments in the lexicon, and that, therefore, there is no need for an independent grammar domain. Citing data on the acquisition of negative commands in Catalan and Spanish, Grinstead argues that beyond grammatical elements that are linked with lexical items, there must also exist independently a computational component, which includes grammatical constraints. He argues further that these constraints are observed from the beginning of acquisition. The purpose of this note is, first, to challenge the evidence Grinstead brings to bear in support of this position and, second, to argue further that the acquisition of negative commands in Spanish is better understood in terms of item-based learning combined with low functional load.

Learning the Japanese pitch accent

Abstract Teaching and reference materials of Japanese frequently neglect the accentual features of words, and accentual distinctions have been claimed to carry a low functional load in the language. The aim of this article is to present evidence for the communicative importance of the pitch accent, and to provide a comprehensive pedagogically-oriented description of the accentual features of one important section of the vocabulary, Japanese verbs. Full accentual paradigms of verb forms are described, and common verbs are presented in heuristic groupings as an aid to learners in internalizing their accentual category membership.